Problem Solving Skills Among Graduate Engineers: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Industrial Revolution 4.0 has been one of the most popular topics discussed among engineers. In the near future the non-technical skills will be equally or more important than technical skills. Moreover, IR4.0 will incur job displacement and majority of the task will be taken over by robots and Artificial Intelligent (Tapsir, S.H. and Puteh, M., 2018. Framing Malaysian Higher Education 4.0). Therefore, priority will be given to non-technical skills which cannot be done completely by the robots and Artificial Intelligent at the moment. NACE Job Outlook 2019 (To, F., et al., 2019. Job Outlook 2019, (November 2018)) shows Problem Solving Skills is the second most important skill sought by employers; Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC), 8-Disciplinary and Plan- Do-Check-Act (PDCA) are the very common systematic approaches used by the industries to solve the problem arose in the industrial environment. The studies show that the problems cannot be solved by using the same kind of thinking approach applied at the moment it was created. Therefore, a systematic analytical skill is required to handle the engineering related problems happening at manufacturing environment or engineering workplace. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing literature about Problem Solving skills for graduate engineers through a systematic literature review. This paper analyses literature through electronic databases mainly from Scopus and Web of Science. This paper summarizes types of problem-solving skills applied in the engineering field as of now. Based on that, engineers can differentiate and understand the approach of the problemsolving skills in the industrial environment to improve the failures and increase productivity.

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